Chapel Hill Cheetahs XC - It’s a wrap!
That’s just about a wrap on the season! Today we’ll cover:
What a fun time at the meet! It was a beautiful, if a bit warm for running, day, and we ran really well! There were over 500 runners, and the depth of the race continues to improve. Our middle school boys WINNING is probably the highlight of the meet! I was quietly hoping for this all season - they were underdogs to the Cary Fire, but we have great depth, those guys worked hard all year and beat out Cary’s depth, and that decided the team race! Only five points separated the teams, and that is just winning the individual races to the line. This is our first time winning hardware (top 2), so a huge congrats to those guys - and to the whole team - we wouldn’t be here without training partners to push us on! We also finished 3rd for both HS & MS girls, and we had our first ever scoring HS boys team!
Individually, we had two on the podium: Ella McCall is the HS girls state champ! She had a great duel with Karis Fraley of New Life and took the win in 19:19. Nora McCall took second for MS girls in 12:30 - Annabelle Hanson of Forsyth dominated in 12:03, but Nora raced smartly and hit her two goals: 1) Second place, and 2) beating out Ella’s middle school PR on this course (by three seconds).
We had three other top ten placings: Will Martz and Noah Pettigrew have been swapping places on the podium and pushing each other in practice all season long - it was amazing to see them finish literally a shoe length apart with Will taking 8th and Noah taking 9th both in 12:30. Ellie Parks finished 9th HS girl in 22:54 - It’s great to see her back in the top ten after not being able to run last year!
If I am not mistaken, every middle schooler PRed! Many of the HS did as well, but the race did seem to have a bit slower times across the board for the 5k - the direct sun / heat, possibly? In any case… Great job everyone!
There were so many fantastic finishes and stories … here are just a a couple of those highlights from my perspective:
State Results - Place, time, and drop from last year at this meet (last year -> this year):
MS boys:
8th - Will Martz: 12:30.6
9th - Noah Pettigrew: 13:36 -> 12:30.8
13th - Henry Milsom: 14:38 -> 12:54
20th - Matthew Campbell: 13:11 (first TT mile was 7:55)
25th - Owen West: 14:54 -> 13:24
41st - Will Curry: 17:18 -> 14:08
45th - Walker Stone: 14:16
55th - Hap Perry: 15:33 -> 14:31
86th - Christopher Rose: 16:52 -> 15:56
108th - Jonathan Curtis: 22:22 -> 17:29
MS Girls:
2nd - Nora McCall: 13:58 -> 12:30
13th - Maggie Curry: 14:28 (TT mile was 8:40)
26th - Lauris Bradney: 15:04 (first TT mile was 8:36)
27th - Brynn Perry: 16:37 -> 15:06
46th - Caroline Cratty: 16:28
60th - Louisa Cratty: 17:30
64th - Jacey O'Briant: 19:53 -> 17:35
65th - Annabelle Burnell: 23:11 -> 17:36
70th - Anna Cook: 22:01 -> 17:42
95th - Lilly O'Briant: 19:47
HS Boys:
79th - Owen Curtis: 21:50
89th - Max Stone: 21:59
93rd - Caden McDaniel: 22:20
123rd - Peter Ransom: 24:32
132rd - Adrian Shenvi: 25:21
148th - Oliver Martin: 32:57
HS Girls:
1st - Ella McCall: 19:19
9th - Ellie Parks: 22:54
13th - Gabby Burnell: 23:13
26th - Ava Matthews: 24:51
47th - Jerusha Curtis: 27:13
106th - Lara Cratty: 34:39
Results: https://milesplit.live/meets/629123/events (still only on the live site, they need to fix the middle school results on the main milesplit site - but I digress…)
I’m sure I missed something above, I apologize! And a special thank you to the parents who make this all happen, getting your kids to practice, and for those that volunteered both at practices and at the meets - I want to particularly thank to the Burnells and the Bradneys in that regard!
Time: 6pm
Location: Faith Alliance Church (1309 Umstead Rd, Durham)
We will have Pizza, Salad, Drinks and Desserts.
I will order the pizza ahead of time, but we will need a volunteer to pick it up. If you are willing to bring a dessert/drinks please let me know.
I also need to have a count of the number of people who will be attending. Please let me (Tim) know ASAP so that we can plan for enough food.
See the training spreadsheet for training plan details, terminology, and resources
For everyone who is not attending the MS State race next Saturday - well, you are on your own for now! (not really - feel free to email your coaches for ideas and help if you’d like!) And see the next segment for thoughts on continuing training.
For those who are going to the MS meet on Saturday, see below for a suggested week. The idea is to continue your taper for another week to try and have another peak performance. Very likely you will drop more time on Saturday! The plan looks a lot like last week.
A higher intensity workout - this is exactly the same as last Monday.
1/2 mile warmup, dynamics, 4x strides to 90%
MS: 600m 2m pace, get out fast and then settle. 600m 2mi pace, steady. 400m 1mi pace. 200m Build to fast. (1800m faster)
5min CD
If you typically run this day, continue to do so, but cut down your running time by about 1/3. Keep it easy, and run some strides at the end.
Pre-race sharpening.
1/2 mile WU, Dynamics, 4x Strides
JV: 6x200m
As:
Fast/Settle
2x Race pace
2x Mile pace
Fast/Faster/Fastest
5min CD
Rest
Pre-race shakeout. Run 15-20 minutes and do 4x 20s strides to 95% at the end.
Race!
Thanks again to Greg Milsom for https://chapelhillcheetahsxc.org. Please upload race photo here! I need more photos!
Let us know if you don’t want your child in publicly displayed photos.
Last week I listed a number of XC meets that anyone can enter. Today I wanted to list off other opportunities to run. Please know that Deerstream or even Tim or I are not recommending or referring you to these groups - they are just some local groups that both Tim and I know about and have some level of familiarity with. I hope they are helpful.
First, the best way to improve at running is… to run more & more consistently. That could be on your own, just easy base building type runs, or phased out like our season has been. But at your age it’s really important to also play other sports that get you moving and working aerobically! You don’t want to get bored, and you do want to work other muscles and flexibility and work on explosiveness and strength - other sports are good ways to do that (so is track!).
There are a number of clubs you can join - these clubs typically train year round with XC, indoor, and outdoor track seasons with practices 5 or 6 times per week. They compete locally, regionally, and nationally, and they give the opportunity to take the sport as far as you want to go - or maybe get injured and burn out:
Without Limits Triangle: This is the one the McCall’s are involved in, so I am biased. Great leaders, lots of fun, and extremely high achieving - AAU XC national champs for 13-14 last year, both boys and girls. Distance focused, for all ages, but it skews *heavily* to middle school and elementary (but we are trying to change that!) Meets primarily in Cary. The head coach, Josh Estep, helped found Cary Fire back in the day when he was coaching at Cary Christian, is ordained, teaches apologetics HLA and coaches their XC team, is the senior campus minister for CRU at NCState, and has four kids. <- no surprise, he isn’t always great at responding to texts. :D
https://withoutlimitstriangle.com/
North Durham Run Club: Small and new, but high performance with a focus on distance. I hear it is excellent coaching and they have produced some top runners - she ran at NC State with and deep ties to the local track world - Her husband is the Cardinal Gibbons head coach and also ran for State. At least three former Cheetahs run with them.
https://www.instagram.com/northdurhamrc/
Durham Striders: Meet at Riverside HS and other locations. I don’t know a ton about them, but I do know they are competitive, and are primarily sprint focused.
https://www.durhamstriders.com/
Other opportunities:
The CC (Chapel Hill & Carborro) Pacers: Lower key youth running club that meets two or three times per week and gets kids running. We did it one season, it was fun! https://sites.google.com/view/ccpacers/home
The Carolina Godiva Track Club: All-ages running club that puts on all sorts of lower key events. They have a great 10-week track season in the summer, an XC series in the fall and a Trail running series in the winter, along with group runs, etc. https://www.carolinagodiva.org/
Bull City Track Club: Honestly I don’t know a ton about them! They are connected to The Bull City Running Co. and are all-age, and put on group runs and races. https://bullcityrunning.com/bull-city-track-club/
Parkrun: Parkrun is a global organization that has free (volunteer run) 5k’s every Saturday morning! It’s a pretty cool group that around here is closely linked to the Carolina Godiva Club. They have one in Durham (https://www.parkrun.us/durhamnc/) and a newer one in Chapel Hill (https://www.parkrun.us/umsteadpark/).
I’m sure there are many others, but that’s all for now!
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